Break Dengue made significant strides in 2016. We expanded our Dengue Expert Community to over 1250 experts across the world, launched Dengue Track, a dengue surveillance tool, and entered partnerships with numerous key organisations across the world that are equally committed to fighting Dengue. 2017 looks to be our busiest year yet, as we will strive to work towards the WHO 2020 objectives on Dengue by further increasing our expert community and alliance, and promoting further uptake of Dengue Track. Read about our recent work and future plans in the full project report, including our financial report.

About the project

Given that efforts to control Dengue Fever across the globe have tended to be short-lived and limited in scope, Break Dengue was set up with the express aim to connect and enhance these initiatives through shared value. The Synergist is the operational lead for Break Dengue. While we are not disease area experts, we have identified and connected many of those who are, creating an ecosystem that has driven genuine collective impact on Dengue Fever.

Break Dengue works within the context of the WHO 2020 Action Plan for Dengue. Each of our past and future initiatives - outlined below - address specific WHO recommendations, such as the improvement of monitoring to enable corrective action, better risk communication, cross-sector partnership development and collaboration, and improved surveillance and outbreak preparedness.

Key achievements in 2016

Dengue Track included over 1,000 reports on outbreaks in 2016 across Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Africa, already allowing for superior mapping and information sharing in the ongoing fight against Dengue.

Dengue Expert Community

A core goal of Break Dengue since inception has been to establish a thriving, neutral community of experts. In 2016, we came closer to cementing this goal. Our community - Dengue Lab - reached +1,250 experts, who together worked on all core projects.

Beta launch of a dengue surveillance tool with over 1,000 reports on outbreaks in 2016 across Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Africa.

Dengue Track

If we are to successfully combat Dengue, it is essential that existing outbreaks are mapped more accurately and at greater speed. The WHO cites better surveillance as essential to tackling Dengue, as it enables individuals and organisations in areas of risk to conduct more precise surveillance and rapid diagnostics. However, gathering accurate data has been challenging. Dengue Track aims to plug this gap. It crowdsources information about outbreaks from a range of channels and alerts communities at risk (via individuals, NGOs and local government) with near real-time accuracy.

Dengue Track included over 1,000 reports on outbreaks in 2016 across Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Africa, allowing for superior mapping and information sharing in the ongoing fight against Dengue.

Dengue Track is a highly innovative approach because it combines real time data input with the ability to push it to relevant audiences, and because it is the first surveillance tool to integrate a broad range of sources and stakeholders.

2016 mobilisation campaigns included an “All against dengue” game centred on the Rio Olympics, a €10,000 community action prize and participation in a Data4Good hackathon.

Stakeholder mobilisation

While tools can help, people remain the focal point of any endeavour in the health and development arena. We are committed to mobilising key public stakeholders and to create local-level ambassador to drive efforts. In 2016 we launched mobilisation campaigns specifically to engage people with our programme. Highlights included:

All Against Dengue, an online game centred on the Rio Olympics which raised awareness of the risks for event attendees specifically

Break Dengue Community Action Prize, which offers €10,000 for ideas centred on the challenges of Dengue vaccine dissemination and uptake. 67 submissions have so far been received, with the winner to be announced in 2017.

Two hackathon events – ISNTD Festival and Data4Good Dengue Hackathon – to enlist the support of the online community to spread the word.

Collective action partnerships

On most complex issues, greater impact is achieved when stakeholders work together, not in isolation. But the first step in collective impact involves actually bringing together key stakeholders - which is not always easy. As a collective impact initiative, Break Dengue recognises that identifying and connecting NGOs, relevant UN agencies, HCP associations – and of course local, grassroots level organisations, is key to success. This work continued in 2016, as we set up partnerships with The Data Science Community and John Snow Labs, and numerous local health authorities, NGOs, and relevant industry players.

Media work

Despite the danger it represents to communities across the world, awareness of Dengue and the understanding of how to combat it remain limited – and this in part due to the poor media coverage it attracts compared to more prominent diseases. We are seeking to counter this imbalance. Working with expert partners, we are committed to educating the public about risks, impact and prevention through greater media exposure. Communications successes in 2016 included 37 published stories, including 2 op-eds in Devex and The Guardian, and several million people reached and engaged on various social media channels. Collectively, our efforts have helped to raise awareness and build a sense of urgency in high-risk communities.

Our vision remains to become a key partner in identifying and promoting solutions towards the WHO 2020 Dengue objectives. In the spirit of shared value and collective impact, we seek to do so by nurturing a collaborative environment that furthers education. Learn more

The vision

Break Dengue is addressing areas such as: superior risk communication; mobilisation of resources and integration across diseases like dengue; collaboration between academics, research institutions and dengue prevention managers; improved surveillance and outbreak preparedness.

In the spirit of shared value and collective impact, we seek to do so by nurturing a collaborative environment that furthers education, partnership building, mobilisation of key stakeholders and impacted communities, and by providing tools that enable people and organisations to be more effective.

Our editorial objective is to address and disseminate the risks of Dengue as broadly as possible, especially in high-impact communities. Learn more

Communicating risk

Creative storytelling techniques and delivery across multiple channels, especially digital, will continue to be developed by the Break Dengue team and partners. Moreover, specific campaigns will be explored for most-at-risk areas and Dengue Track will continue to provide alerts to these same geographies.

We will continue to look to expand the community with the most relevant experts from across the globe. Learn more

Grow Dengue support and expert communities

Now at 1,250 experts, we will continue to look to expand the Dengue Lab community with the most relevant experts from across the globe, to provide insight to improve our tools and communications, as well as credibility and reach amongst new audiences.

We will seek to formalise the governance structure of our organisation to facilitate new, diverse member participation. Learn more

Expand and formalise the Break Dengue alliance

From a loose collection of stakeholders we will seek to formalise the governance structure of our organisation to facilitate new, diverse member participation, make it easier for stakeholders to understand and search within the network, and to extend the alliance to stakeholders involved in other mosquito-borne diseases.

In 2017 Dengue Track will be further improved to better monitor outbreaks and communication to at-risk communities. Learn more

Including Dengue Track into a complex surveillance and prediction system for vector-borne diseases

Areas for improvement in 2017 include the integration of additional sources of information, like additional official epidemiological data, outbreak data based on Google searches, social media data, relevant climate data etc.

In addition, we will seek to expand the alert system to more health authorities and laboratories, in addition to the general public, and explore the expansion of the application to other mosquito-borne disease areas. To enable rapid progress, and in the spirit of collective impact, we will seek deeper support from partners to provide richer data sets and interpretation methods.